In his Letter to Editor, Delarue (2016) suggests that our observation of increased microbial activity cannot adequately explain the observed changes in peat chemistry (Bragazza et al., 2016). Shortly, he argues that our interpretation of the results does not account for the plant cover dynamics, and/or the preferential decomposition of labile polysaccharides. Whilst Delarue (2016) raises an interesting point, below we demonstrate that his comments cannot explain the pattern in our data. This article is protected by copyright...

OBJECTIVES: Cytology is a quick, inexpensive, minimally invasive and widely available diagnostic method, but rigorous cooperation between clinical cytopathologist and physician is necessary to obtain clinically useful results. The aim of this study was to identify factors that affect clinical usefulness of a cytological result when the cellular material was collected by a general veterinary practitioner and examined by a clinical cytopathologist. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Analysis of 100 fine-needle aspirates performed by private veterinarians and examined by the clinical cytopathologist...

We thank Dr Elsner for his interest in our supplement "Fragility of epidermis in newborns, children and adolescents" recently published in this journal, but note his concern about the value of the term "fragile skin" as a scientifically useful disease definition, given the wide spectrum of conditions covered by the term [1]. Contrary to what is suggested in the letter by Dr Elsner, fragile skin is not a "disease" and should not be confounded with skin fragility existing in the repertoire of dermatological diseases requiring medical treatment using pharmaceutical interventions (e...

AIM: The present study is an audit of the communiqués issued by the Drugs Controller General of India [DCGI] to Ethics Committees [ECs] for content and directives after the mandatory notification of registration of Ethics Committees issued on 8(th) February 2013. METHODS: All letters were downloaded from the website of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization [CDSCO] and evaluated for the date of issue, number of directives, domains covered by the directives [general instructions, administrative requirements and quorum requirements], median time to approval for registration and time elapsed between date of application and issue of the approval letter...

BACKGROUND: There is increasing evidence that traces of hazardous drugs occur in the urine of health care professionals who are exposed to these drugs. OBJECTIVE: To review the scientific literature regarding urinary monitoring of health care professionals exposed to antineoplastic drugs through their work. DATA SOURCES: A search of PubMed using the Medical Subject Headings 'occupational exposure' and 'antineoplastic agents' and of Google Scholar using the terms 'antineoplastic', 'urine', and 'occupational exposure'...

Many features of mitochondrial genomes of animals, such as patterns of gene arrangement, nucleotide content and substitution rate variation are extensively used in evolutionary and phylogenetic studies. Nearly 6,000 mitochondrial genomes of animals have already been sequenced, covering the majority of animal phyla. One of the groups that escaped mitogenome sequencing is phylum Kinorhyncha-an isolated taxon of microscopic worm-like ecdysozoans. The kinorhynchs are thought to be one of the early-branching lineages of Ecdysozoa, and their mitochondrial genomes may be important for resolving evolutionary relations between major animal taxa...

Fine motor skills like typing involve a mapping problem that trades Fitts' law against Hick's law. Eight fingers have to be mapped onto 26 keys. Movement time increases with distance, so Fitts' law is optimized by recruiting more fingers. Choice difficulty increases with the number of alternatives, so Hick's law is optimized by recruiting fewer fingers. The effect of the number of alternatives decreases with consistent practice, so skilled typists achieve a balance between Fitts' law and Hick's law through learning...

Background Overactive bladder syndrome is a condition where one or more of the symptoms such as pollakiuria, urgent need to urinate, nocturia and urinary incontinence is observed. Its prevalence ranges between 7 and 27 % in men and 9-43 % in women. The role of a pharmacist is to educate the patient on medications administration scheme, and drug interactions with particular food or food components. Aim of the review To assess a potential impact of food and fruit juice on the pharmacokinetic and therapeutic effects of medications used in treating overactive bladder syndrome...

BACKGROUND: The Medicare 5-Star Rating System measures and provides incentive for improving Medicare Part D plans through a quality-based payment program. Adherence to medications for chronic conditions is key to the Star ratings. Our objective was to assess the impact of direct-to-provider letters on improving medication adherence. METHODS: Members of a large US pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) who did not adhere to prescription of oral diabetes (antidiabetics), cholesterol-reducing (statins), or hypertension (renin angiotensin system [RAS] antagonists) drug therapy were identified from the prescriptions claims data of>600,000 continuously enrolled Medicare members...

INTRODUCTION: Facilitation of child development is usually emphasized in the form of early intervention classes and practical demonstrations. However, non-adherence to home program for such interventions has been reported due to various reasons. AIM: To develop and validate an educational leaflet as a supplement guide for caregivers to promote better development of their child during 4-6 months of age. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An in-depth literature review and focus group discussion with the experts was conducted to formulate the content of leaflet...

Introduction: Pelvic ring injuries occur in 3-8 % of patients with fractures. They are rare, with an annual incidence of only 19-37 per 100,000 people annually. There have been publications on the generation of these injuries, as well as their diagnosis and treatment concepts, but there is little information on how these injuries impact the ability to work. Patients: The study covered all hospitalised patients between January 2003 and December 2011 with a pelvic ring injury, who had already been included in the data collection of the AG Becken III and who had had a work-related accident...

BACKGROUND: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) rescheduled hydrocodone combination products (HCPs) in an attempt to mitigate the prescription opioid epidemic. Many in the medical and pharmacy community expressed concerns of unintended consequences as a result of rescheduling. OBJECTIVES: This study examined physicians' intentions to prescribe HCPs after rescheduling using the framework of the theory of reasoned action (TRA). METHODS: A cover letter containing a link to the online questionnaire was sent to physicians of the Texas Medical Association who were likely to prescribe opioids...

BACKGROUND: In Iran, few studies have evaluated emergency medicine as a career option. In the present study, we aimed to find out how Iranian emergency-medicine specialists view their specialty as a career. METHODS: Following a qualitative study, a Likert-scale questionnaire was developed. Iranian emergency physician specialists who had at least two years' job experience were contacted via email. A uniform link to a Web-based survey and a cover letter that explained the survey were sent to the recipients...

BACKGROUND: There is sufficient evidence that monetary incentives are effective in increasing survey response rates in the general population as well as with physicians. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of a monetary incentive intended for administrative assistants on the survey response rate of physicians in leadership positions. METHODS: This was an ancillary study to a national survey of chairs of academic Departments of Medicine in the United States about measuring faculty productivity...

The impact factor (IF) for 2015 was recently released and this could be the time to once again reflect on its use as a metric of a journal. Problems and concerns regarding the IF have been addressed extensively elsewhere 1 2. The principle of the IF for a given year is that it represents the average number of citations of articles published in the journal in the two previous years.While authors frequently cite the IF as a determining factor for submission, the IF does not predict how many times individual articles will be cited...

BACKGROUND: Self-harm rates among imprisoned women in the UK are extremely high and there are limited psychological therapies available to support them in prison. This paper presents women's subjective accounts of receiving good-bye letters at the end of brief psychodynamic interpersonal therapy (PIT) and how these letters positively impacted on their incidents of self-harm. AIMS: This study presents the accounts of 13 imprisoned women who self-harmed and received letters following completion of a minimum of four sessions of brief PIT in prison...

IMPORTANCE: The Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE)--formerly called the dean's letter--is an important tool for residency program directors to use in assessing student qualifications for both invitation to interview and construction of their rank order list. Many institutions are now allowing students to construct their own Unique Characteristics (UC) section for the MSPE. This study addresses the results of allowing students to construct their own UC. OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study was to allow students to voice their thoughts regarding their participation in the construction of the UC section of the MSPE...

The k-dimensional coding schemes refer to a collection of methods that attempt to represent data using a set of representative k-dimensional vectors and include nonnegative matrix factorization, dictionary learning, sparse coding, k-means clustering, and vector quantization as special cases. Previous generalization bounds for the reconstruction error of the k-dimensional coding schemes are mainly dimensionality-independent. A major advantage of these bounds is that they can be used to analyze the generalization error when data are mapped into an infinite- or high-dimensional feature space...

BACKGROUND: Medication therapy management (MTM) programs were first introduced as a result of the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act. Since then, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have established minimum requirements for health plans to follow in establishing patient eligibility for enrollment in these programs. The eligibility criteria are based on projected annual Part D medication costs, number of chronic disease states, and number of chronic Part D covered medications...